Walter Mosley, writer of Easy Rawlins books and some SF, said all genres of pop fiction are conservative because they uphold the status quo; however, SF is not because it subverts the status quo
Thinking of conversative as "sustaining the
status quo" and liberal as "advocating change" is a pretty worthless, misleading, and uninteresting way to categorize these two complex schools of thought. It's a distinction that has very little basis in reality. It's main function (in this disussion at least) is to force these two ideologies into rigid, cliched boxes in order to pack them neatly into the s.f./fantasy context. I'm not even sure why anyone would
want to do that. Does equating conservatives with Elves and Dwarves illustrate how silly conservatives are? Does equating libererals with forward-thinking scientists make them more respectable and realistic by comparison? Does anyone here think that Donaldson is conservative while he writes the Chronicles, but turns into a liberal when he writes the Gap? This way of thinking is pointless and silly.
While it's true that conservative principles today often align with the Constitutional principles of the past, this alignment doesn't happen merely because conservatives are interested in the
status quo. The Constitution was pretty radical and Revolutionary when it was written. And it contains its own mechanism for change (Amendments). Remaining the same was never part of its intended purpose, nor it is a conservative principle in itself.
Any ideal that people cling to can become the
status quo, whether it's a liberal or conservative ideal.
For instance, liberals have advocated Big Government solutions for over a century. And in many ways this ideal has become a new
status quo: our government keeps spending more, taxing more, providing more services, and growing in size and power. So if this has been the way we conduct ourselves for nearly a century, then why isn't liberalism equated with the
status quo? How long does it take before a "new" way of doing business becomes the
status quo? In as much as liberals keep advocating change, they do this because they haven't completed their goal yet (which, I suppose, must be some Utopian level of government taking care of you and controling society). But once they reach that level, will there still be a need for change? Once they get what they want (universal health care, free everything), why would they want to change it? [Well, I suppose as long as someone has more money than someone else, that somone else will see a role for the government to even up the scales by confiscating the money and giving it to himself. In this sense, we can say that liberalism is perpetually focused on Change because it can never achieve its extremely unrealistic goal of perfectly equal outcomes.]
If we go issue-by-issue, the picture becomes even more muddled. Liberals don't want Roe-vs-Wade overturned. Doesn't that mean they support the
status quo of abortion rights? On the other hand, conservatives have succeeded in overturning gun control laws this year with two landmark SCOTUS rulings. Doesn't that mean that conservatives have succeeded in bringing about
change in gun laws?? Or look at taxes. Have you noticed that no one is for keeping tax rates the same? Conservatives are perpetually for smaller taxes, and liberals are perpetually for higher taxes. Both sides attack the
status quo from different directions.
But we can also take this full-circle by considering the opposite case. Let's suppose I'm wrong. Let's say that conservatives truly are resistent to change. Why would that be? Are they frightened of the Future? Do they fear their power threatened? Are they small-minded people who need the comforting rituals of tradition? Well, obviously those are loaded questions which assume a perspective that Change is good and resisting it is bad. Those questions ignore what the Change is, by assuming that there is no specific Change which conservatives conceivably resist--but instead fear
all Change ... Change in general. Those are liberal assumptions, liberal questions.
Let's instead look at it from the perspective of a conservative: the Change which our country perpetually experiences is a never-ending trend of the government getting bigger, more powerful, more expensive, more controling. That's a historical fact. That's what's happening to us. Our taxes go up, our freedoms become restricted, our lives become increasingly regulated. In the context of those actual changes, "supporting the status quo" is just another way of saying, "resisting liberalism." It's not that we (conservatives) want our country to stagnate. We just don't want it to become more liberal ... just as liberals don't want it to become more conservative. It's the same exact desire, expressed through two different ideological perspectives. The only reason this natural tension between two ideologies can be framed in terms
status quo and Change is because one of those ideologies is in direct contradiction with our founding principles which make us America. In order for liberals to remake the country in their image, they must take it away from its founding principles of limited government and maximized freedom. By characterizing their opponents as fearing Change in general, liberals divert attention away from the question of whether the particular changes which they want to impliment are
desirable in the first place. Not all Change is for the better. Conservatives resist destructive, restrictive, expensive change. If you want to make life cheaper and freer, we're all for that Change.
